The Royal Observatory, Greenwich. E. Walter Maunder

The Royal Observatory, Greenwich - E. Walter Maunder


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its programme have taken place. But assistance to navigation is now, and has always been, the dominant note in its management.

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      For the first century of its existence, the lives of its Astronomers Royal formed practically the history of the Royal Observatory. During this period, the Observatory was itself so small that the Astronomer Royal, with a single assistant, sufficed for the entire work. Everything, therefore, depended upon the ability, energy, and character of the actual director. There was no large organized staff, established routine, or official tradition, to keep the institution moving on certain lines, irrespective of the personal qualities of the chief. It was specially fortunate, therefore, that the first four Astronomers Royal, Flamsteed, Halley, Bradley, and Maskelyne (for Bliss, the immediate successor of Bradley, reigned for so short a time that he may be practically left out of the count), were all men of the most conspicuous ability.

      It will be convenient to divide the history of the first seven Astronomers Royal into three sections. In the first, we have the founder, John Flamsteed, a pathetic and interesting figure, whom we seem to know with especial clearness, from the fulness of the memorials which he has left to us. He was succeeded by the man who was, indeed, best fitted to succeed him, but whom he most hated. The second to the sixth Astronomers Royal formed what we might almost speak of as a dynasty, each in turn nominating his successor, who had entered into more or less close connection with the Observatory during the lifetime of the previous director; and the lives of these five may well form the second section. The line was interrupted after the resignation of the sixth Astronomer Royal, and the third section will be devoted to the seventh director, Airy, under whom the Observatory entered upon its modern period of expansion.

      'God suffers not man to be idle, although he swim in the midst of delights; for when He had placed His own image (Adam) in a paradise so replenished (of His goodness) with varieties of all things, conducing as well to his pleasure as sustenance, that the earth produced of itself things convenient for both—He yet (to keep him out of idleness) commands him to till, prune, and dress his pleasant, verdant habitation; and to add (if it might be) some lustre, grace, or conveniency to that place, which, as well as he, derived its original from his Creator.'

      In these words John Flamsteed begins the first of several autobiographies which he has handed down to us; this particular one being written before he attained his majority, 'to keep myself from idleness and to recreate myself.'

      'I was born,' he goes on, 'at Denby, in Derbyshire, in the year 1646, on the 19th day of August, at 7 hours 16 minutes after noon. My father, named Stephen, was the third son of Mr. William Flamsteed, of Little Hallam; my mother, Mary, was the daughter of Mr. John Spateman, of Derby, ironmonger. From these two I derived my beginning, whose parents were of known integrity, honesty, and fortune, as they [were] of equal extraction and ingenuity; betwixt whom I [was] tenderly educated (by reason of my natural weakness, which required more than ordinary care) till I was aged three years and a fortnight; when my mother departed, leaving my father a daughter, then not a month old, with me, then weak, to his fatherly care and provision.'

      The weakly, motherless boy became at an early age a voracious reader. At first, he says—

      'I began to affect the volubility and ranting stories of romances; and at twelve years of age I first left off the wild ones, and betook myself to read the better sort of them, which, though they were not probable, yet carried no seeming impossibility in the fiction. Afterwards, as my reason increased, I gathered other real histories; and by the time I was fifteen years old I had read, of the ancients, Plutarch's Lives, Appian's and Tacitus's Roman Histories, Holingshed's History of the Kings of England, Davies's Life of Queen Elizabeth, Saunderson's of King Charles the First, Heyling's Geography, and many others of the moderns; besides a company of romances and other stories, of which I scarce remember a tenth at present.'

      Flamsteed received his education at the free school at Derby, where he continued until the Whitsuntide of 1662, when he was nearly sixteen years of age. Two years earlier than this, however, a great misfortune fell upon him.

      'At fourteen years of age,' he writes, 'when I was nearly arrived to be the head of the free-school, [I was] visited with a fit of sickness, that was followed with a consumption and other distempers, which yet did not so much hinder me in my learning, but that I still kept my station till the form broke up, and some of my fellows went to the Universities; for which, though I was designed, my father thought it not advisable to send me, by reason of my distemper.'

      

      This was a keen disappointment to him, but seems to have really been the means of determining his career. The sickly, suffering boy could not be idle, though 'a day's short reading caused so violent a headache;' and a month or two after he had left school, he had a book lent to him—Sacrobosco's De Sphæra, in Latin—which was the beginning of his mathematical studies. A partial eclipse of the sun in September of the same year seems to have first drawn his attention to astronomical observation, and during the winter his father, who had himself a strong passion for arithmetic, instructed him in that science.

      It was astonishing how quickly his appetite for his new subjects grew. The Art of Dialling, the calculation of tables of the sun's altitudes for all hours of the day, and for different latitudes, and the construction of a quadrant—'of which I was not meanly joyful'—were the occupations of this winter of illness.

      In 1664 he made the acquaintanceship of two friends, Mr. George Linacre and Mr. William Litchford; the former of whom taught him to recognize many of the fixed stars, whilst the latter was the means of his introduction to a knowledge of the motions of the planets.

      'I had now completed eighteen years, when the winter came on, and thrust me again into the chimney; whence the heat and dryness of the preceding summer had happily once before withdrawn me.'

      The following year, 1665, was memorable to him 'for the appearance of the comet,' and for a journey which he made to Ireland to be 'stroked' for his rheumatic disorder by Valentine Greatrackes, a kind of mesmerist, who had the repute of effecting wonderful cures. The journey, of which he gives a full and vivid account, occupied a month; but though he was a little better, the following winter brought him no permanent benefit.

      But, ill or well, he pressed on his astronomical studies. A large partial eclipse of the sun was due the following June; he computed the particulars of it for Derby, and observed the eclipse itself to the best of his ability. He argued out for himself 'the equation of time'; the difference, that is, between time as given by the actual sun, or 'apparent time,' and that given by a perfect clock, or 'mean time.' He drew up a catalogue of seventy stars, computing their right ascensions, declinations, longitudes, and latitudes for the year 1701; he attempted to determine the inclination of the ecliptic, the mean length of the tropical year, and the actual distance of the earth from the sun. And these were the recreations of a sickly, suffering young man, not yet twenty-one years of age, and who had only begun the study of arithmetic, such as fractions and the rule of three, four years previously!

      His next attempt was almanac-making, in the which he improved considerably upon those current at the time. His almanac for 1670 was rejected, however, and returned to him, and, not to lose his whole labour, he sent his calculations of an eclipse of the sun, and of five occultations of stars by the moon, which he had undertaken for the almanac, to the Royal Society. He sent the paper anonymously, or, rather, signed it with an anagram, 'In mathesi a sole fundes,' for 'Johannes Flamsteedius.' His covering letter ends thus:—

      'Excuse, I pray you, this juvenile heat for the concerns of science and want of better language, from one who, from the sixteenth year of his age to this instant, hath only served one bare apprenticeship in these arts, under the discouragement of friends, the want of health, and all other


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